Firm Foundations

 Necessary Evil!

It must have been withdrawal symptoms... not being able to sew over the Easter weekend... but this week I have thrown myself into 2 things I generally do very little of.

The first was foundation piecing. Sandy has been leading the way on a very intricate Block of the Month project called the 'Halo Quilt', designed by Sue Garman (sadly no longer with us) for the Quilt Show.

I made the centre star a while back and have been too busy with other things to get any further. 

But I really wanted to have a go at curved flying geese and there really is no other way but foundation piecing. 

It is not my favourite technique, but I got stuck in and produced these 16 'arcs' in 2 days. I was pleasantly surprised at how little waste there was, as it gave me the opportunity to use up little odds and ends from my 'Treasure basket'.

I will probably need to make more, but I haven't decided on the final layout yet. As usual I am making it up as I go along and will adapt the original pattern to incorporate other elements of my own.

Today I have started to set them into their background squares. Curved piecing WITH PINS - no option with these!

So far, so good!

The other thing I have been playing with is English Paper Piecing. I was so impressed with Karen's little hexie quilt made using pre-cut 'Hexieforms' which can be left in, that I ordered some (300 actually), but smaller, with 3/4 inch sides. I am inspired to make a smaller scale 'Mrs Billing's Coverlet' style quilt and I plan to use them for applique rather than make a whole piece with them.

The cutting out and tacking is rather tedious (though not wasteful), but once you start to piece them into these little flower shapes they come together really quickly. 

I can see how this can become addictive!

Happy Quilting Everyone!

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Back to Business

Lovely Applique

After last week's bag diversion, it was back to business up in the loft, to complete 2 pieces I had been asked to quilt. This one is another fun applique design put together by Jenny. What a charming pattern - I'm sure her granddaughter will love it!

 

I have quilted it quite heavily to fill in the large open spaces and to take up a bit of fullness in the borders. 

Before that, I quilted this top for Jean Hipwell. It was mystery quilt which she had adapted a little to make it fit together the way she wanted. 

I took the opportunity to practise this quilting design called 'feathered swirls' by Judi Madsen. Her quilting is truly phenomenal and I have a couple of her books to study. I would love to get anywhere near her standard! 

I have watched her video over and over and tried it a couple of times before.

 It is still not quite right but I am definitely improving. I am getting better at the shapes. But I need to get the 'travelling' right and to fill the space more evenly.

But Hey! Practice makes Perfect. I am determined to get the hang of it. 

Talking of practice, I found time to try some free motion quilting on the Bernina, using the transparent quilting foot I got at Birmingham, and the Brother hoop, and I got on fairly well. I will try it on the Brother machine too when I get a moment.

In between times, I have started on the '40 scraps challenge' which Ann K gave us from Connecting Threads. The challenge is to use a scrap donated by each member in a single project, as a sort of memento. What a nice idea - I know where I am going with that one and have already made a start. 

Bet you can't guess what it is - but look how little I threw away!

I've also been working on my own version of the 'Sew a row' quilt in blues and creams, mostly Edyta Sitar fabrics. I have done the houses, trees, animals and boats. Now I have cut out a whole fat quarter's worth of stems and leaves for the applique setting, with a little help from Rene on Monday afternoon!

Hardly an inch was wasted!!!!!!!!!!

So I have plenty to be getting on with - Happy Quilting Everyone!

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Mumm's The Word

Extreme Fussy Cutting

Another distraction this week! 

The theme for the last Studio Quilters meeting was to 'make something from the cupboard' i.e. use up a kit or finish off a UFO. I had intended to cut out a folksy style printed waistcoat pattern and make it into a wall hanging. So I dug out all my 'Debbie Mumm' scraps to add to it.

Now these started out as dressmaking scraps that I acquired in the 1990's.

 So they were originally very odd shapes with arm holes cut right through this very busy pattern ('Fruity Kitchen' by Debbie Mumm). I had cut out as many bits of the motifs as I could salvage and had already used up the off cuts of the off cuts! 

Over the years I have moved them from one box (and house) to another, every time I reorganised my stash, and vowed that one day I would find the right project for them. And this was it! 

I abandoned the wall hanging project and set about reconstructing the pieces to form a large enough panel to make a new quilt tote bag.

I framed some of the smaller squares with snippets of the striped sections to make them fit together. And I even spliced sections of the pattern together, carefully matching it up, to make it go further. 

There was even enough for two strips on the inner pockets and for matching inset strips on the handle.

It has taken me all week and I did have to laugh at myself! But now I have turned my obsessive compulsion to use up scraps into another big bag to take quilts and all my other bits around in - I always seem to have so much to carry!

Next up is Jean Hipwell's beautifully pieced top which is loaded and ready to go when it is a bit warmer up in the loft.

Happy Quilting Everyone!

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Mauve Masterpiece

Feathered Friend

Here's a preview of Rose's amazing hexagon quilt. I will show pictures of the whole piece when she has seen it. That is if I can get a a complete picture (it is massive). 

Rose asked me to do a bit more than the pantograph style she usually gets done at the quilt shop. So I gave it the full custom job with ruler work and freehand feathers. Rose thinks she might want to trim the bottom corners into a curve. So I deliberately contained the border design in a curved outline, then quilted a curly filler up to the edge, so that the feathers wouldn't get chopped off.

The hexagons were machine pieced, lots of 'Y' seams, and beautifully done. There was a bit of fullness in the cream background, probably due to the bias effect of the hexagon cut. I managed to 'soak it up' by trailing feathers all around it.

All in all, more than 25 hours on the frame, and I am pleased with the result.

The snow cleared just in time for our little jaunt to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Olympia last weekend. Once again, I showed great restraint for myself, yet managed to encourage another quilting friend to buy a brand new Brother machine like mine! I should be on commission.

I did get this lovely wooden thread stand for my loft studio, a birthday present courtesy of my dear brother who joked...

"Surely wooden threads stand up by themselves!"

Next in the queue is another hexie quilt for Mary S. Hers was hand pieced into ten large diamonds. I played around with different layouts and found that ten doesn't work well. So I joined nine for the top and top stitched it onto this background.



Then I appliqued the tenth one onto the backing, which I also pieced together from various fabrics from her stash. I will do a fairly open edge to edge design on this one. 
Mary kindly gave me a huge amount of fabric which I will be sharing with Studio Quilters tomorrow. 

I think there will be an abundance of green quilts this year!!!!

Happy Quilting Everyone!

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Floral Fancy

Colour Co-ordinated

When Jean S bought my last piece of this gorgeous blue fabric from the Autumn Lily range from Blackbird Designs for Moda, I could hardly bear to part with it. But when I saw what she did with it, I was delighted! As it turned out, it was just the inspiration she needed for the border to finish piecing this gorgeous top for a quilt intended for her daughter. 
How pretty is this?!



Not all of the fabrics came from my collection, as Jean thought, but certainly the majority had. Many were by 3 Sisters or French General, both absolute favourites of mine, so it was an inspiration for me to quilt it. Technically, this piece was second in line to be done, but as I had to order thread for the first one, it happily jumped to the head of the queue!

This one needed to be quilted with my most feminine curled ribbon with petals motif and it showed up beautifully on my plain calico backing .

Now it is finished and perched prettily on the end of my chaise longue, I'm not sure I will ever be able to let her have it back!!!

While I wait for the thread for Rose's massive hexie quilt to arrive, I have plenty to keep me busy. My friend Mary, whose health is not too good, has asked me to finish off her paper pieced hexie project for her. In return she has given me her substantial stash!




Happy Quilting Everyone!

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Jamestown Landing

Good Housekeeping

I've resisted all other distractions over the last two days and have completed the Jamestown Landing project. Mind you, I was up 'til midnight yesterday and spent four hours hand stitching the binding today.



The thing with Bonnie Hunter's quilts (like a lot of American quilts, I suppose) is that they come out really big! I can't get far enough away from it to take a good photo!

 
  
The original design had a six inch border of blue strips in a piano key layout. I changed it to this three inch border using my little stash of one and half inch blue and neutral twosies and half square triangles. It has shaved off a few inches and I like it better, I think.

 It still finished about 84" x 96".

And I have done my house keeping too! 

These bits I sliced off to make the binding strip are all trimmed down to one and half inches ready to start replenishing that leader/ender stash.

Now I've just got home from Connecting Threads tonight with a bundle of part pieced scraps that were going begging. For some reason the triangles were all cut as quarter squares and the biases are on the outside. 

I've got my seam ripper out already ...watch this space!

Happy Quilting Everyone!

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Push Me - Pull You!

On Ringo Lake

Lovely teals, browns and pinks in this busy design - On Ringo Lake - the latest mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter. This looks like a complicated quilt to piece, even when you know what it is supposed to look like when it's finished. 










Karen made such a great job of it and it was a pleasure to help her finish it off. I gave it the 'hearts and flowers' treatment, (I knew she liked that design), in a teal thread which showed up best.






And talking of tricky piecing I have made huge strides with my own Bonnie Hunter project - Jamestown Landing. It has gone from a pile of small units to a large quilt top, in the space of two days, with only the outer border to add. What fun tearing off the backing papers!  (I even took all the shreds to the paper bank for recycling!)

I was careful not to stretch all the strip squares, but there was still a bit of pulling and pushing needed to get everything to line up nicely. It took a while for my poor flu-addled brain to work out the direction of the swirling background. I had nearly finished it before the penny dropped! Fortunately, the instructions and diagrams were really clear.








I prefer to assemble quilts in sections, rather than rows, as I think it is easier to align it accurately, and you only have one final full width seam to sew. In between each section I used 'leaders and enders' to start piecing the border (which will be different from the original design). 










This little stash of 1 1/2" twosies started off as leaders and enders and now they will make a nice little dotted border. 

I love it when a plan comes together!

Happy Quilting Everyone!

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